12 
CULTURE OF GESNERA RUPESTRIS. 
Gesnera RUPESTRIS, a most elegant little species, and entirely unique among its 
congeners, is a plant that is little known to cultivators, but certainly has charms 
which should introduce it to more general esteem. As usually witnessed, it has one, 
two, or perhaps three large leaves, and a few tufts of flowers ; but owing to tlie 
indiscreet manner in which it is grown, (or rather neglected,) it is only here and 
there brought to that perfection which it is capable of attaining. Having previously 
seen it in no other condition than that above described, we were no less astonished 
than delighted to observe it lately, in a celebrated Kent collection, w^ith as many 
as forty or fifty leaves, and a proportionate number of blossoms. The circumstances 
which appear to have caused this superiority are mainly as follows. 
In the majority of stoves where it is at all cultivated, we have noticed that it 
is kept in a very small pot, not more than an inch or two larger in diameter than 
the great fleshy tuber of the plant itself ; and thus it remains, year after year, in a 
poor soil, and without any attention beyond the needful variation in its supplies of 
water. The tuber, moreover, is allowed to be a quarter or half an inch above the 
earth in the pot, and by this exposure continues yearly to increase in size, at a rapid 
rate, but expends scarcely any of its strength in the production of leaves and 
inflorescence, in consequence of the tuber itself, by being open to the atmosphere, 
performing a great part of the functions which ought to be fulfilled by the more 
ordinary external developments. 
Now, as it is ascertained that every plant requires that a certain quantity of 
surface should be presented to the direct action of the atmosphere in proportion to 
the abundance of its roots, it will be obvious that the immediate contact of so large 
a mass of tuber with the air must check materially the expansion of the usual exterior 
organs, and this, again, will operate to the restricted extension of the roots ; thus 
bringing about a general stuntedness and debility, at least so long as the practice is 
continued. 
To effect an improvement on such a state of things, the mode of proceeding can 
hardly be mistaken, and its results are in the highest degree satisfactory. All that 
needs be done is to cover the tuber lightly — very lightly — with soil, use a more 
nutritive compost, and, at the same time, place the plant in a much larger pot, to 
admit of the additional protrusion of roots which will assuredly follow the augmented 
development of foliage. In two years, a specimen will thus altogether change its 
character in the manner we have shown, and exhibit a copious tuft of healthy 
leaves, beautifully interspersed with clusters of pretty red blossoms. So well 
covered, indeed, was the specimen to which we have referred, that, in a diameter of 
nearly eighteen inches, it could not be discerned whence the leaves and flowers 
issued. 
